


Lullaby (RivaMika Jam 5)

by squiddlesandsopor



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 00:49:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10525443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squiddlesandsopor/pseuds/squiddlesandsopor
Summary: Even though he knows it’s ill-advised in his sleep deprived state to send her a message, even though it’s late - or early in her timezone - and his eyes drift to the clock noticing just how late, even though it won’t change the fact that she’s miles and days away from him, even though he knows he shouldn’t he types a quick message and hits send before he has a chance to second guess himself.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the prompt: “Levi or Mikasa is a musician and currently away on a tour while their partner is home. One or both might be a bit homesick and miss the other”
> 
> I want to extend a thank you to [Monidon](http://monidon.tumblr.com/) for giving me this prompt for the RivaMika Jam. It was fun to try something new and participate in the community.

It’s late. Later than he’s usually up to be honest but it’s nearly impossible to sleep in their room without her next to him. He misses her warmth; her long, lean limbs tangled together with his. Misses the soothing lullaby of her deep, even breaths and the steady thump of her heart. He curls on his side facing the vacant space next to him and thumbs through their messages. The backlighting on his phone is the only light in the room and it exaggerates the severe angles of his face; highlighting the blade of his nose and the sharp ridges of his cheek bones while deepening the shadows under his eyes, along the line of his jaw, and pooling in the tense column of his neck.

He scrolls back down to her most recent message and stares at it until he has to close his eyes on the words that have branded themselves on his heart.

_I miss you._

Even though he knows it’s ill-advised in his sleep deprived state to send her a message, even though it’s late - or early in her timezone - and his eyes drift to the clock noticing just how late, even though it won’t change the fact that she’s miles and days away from him, even though he knows he shouldn’t he types a quick message and hits send before he has a chance to second guess himself.

_174 hours._

He rolls onto his back with a sigh and closes his eyes. He holds no real hope of sleep but resting is better than cleaning the already spotless condo yet again. In his hand he clutches his phone as though it were the only life line in the turbulent sea of his life. Even though it’s held so closely to his skin he almost misses the vibrations he wasn’t expecting at this hour. He raises it to his startled eyes and it’s a call. He breathes her name before answering.

“Hey,” her words are quiet and husky and even over all the distance between them her voice sounds more like home than the empty rooms he now haunts have ever been.

“Why are you up?” He rasps, voice hoarse from disuse.

She chuckles and it's the same laugh after all these years.

_He had been jogging along the surprisingly well maintained trails of a disused park and the sun had lingered like a caress on his sweat damp skin when he stopped for a drink. She was sitting on a grassy hillock a few feet away from where he had paused. There were two others with her but she was the only one he noticed; her face was open and bright like the sun with that same sweet little laugh pouring out of her mouth. He had fallen in love with the sound of it then and there._

Her chuckle fades but he can still hear the smile in her sleepy voice, “It’s hard to sleep on the bus. Your text woke me and I decided I wanted to hear your voice more than I wanted to doze off again.”

He props himself up on his free arm and tries to collect his wandering thoughts. She waits patiently, used to his silences.

_He drove through the pouring rain. The storm had come up suddenly but most people had managed to melt away and he had the road mostly to himself. He was most of the way home when he passed someone on the side of the road resembling nothing so much as a drowned, bedraggled rat with a large instrument case slung across their back. He didn’t usually pick up hitchhikers, although to be fair this person wasn’t flagging him down, but given the weather he made an exception. He signaled and pulled off a little in front of them waiting until they caught up to his hatchback before opening the window. A pale, miserable face peered at him and he was shocked for a moment but recovered quickly._

_“Do you want a ride somewhere?” He asked._

_The face peered at him and he tapped the first two fingers of one hand on the wheel in time with the ticking of his blinkers._

_“You’re the guy from the park.” She said._

_He grunted noncommittally._

_She studied him for another moment before shrugging to herself._

_“Can I put my bass in the back?”_

_“Yeah,” he said, pulling the latch that would release the lock._

_She shuffled to the back and placed the instrument in the rear next to his gym bag and then closed the hatch securely. She hurried back to the door and let herself in. After she was situated and had the belt buckled he signalled his return to the road. Once they were between the lines again he spoke._

_“Where am I taking you?”_

_She gave him an address and then said, “Or as close to there as you’re going.”_

_He balked at that, “I’ll take you where you asked. I’m not so much of an asshole that I’ll dump you out in this shit again without good reason.”_

_He caught her faint smile before she turned to face the window._

_For a couple blocks they drove in silence apart from the constant staccato of the rain and the whooshing of wet tires on wet pavement._

_“So you’re a musician?” He asked._

_She hummed an affirmative._

_“Our band is playing at that new club, 104, this Friday.” She said. “You should come.”_

_He smirked for a moment but didn’t glance away from the grey curtain of precipitation before them._

_“That’s not really my scene.” He said, pulling to a stop in front of the building she had indicated._

_She shrugged, “If you change your mind ask for Mikasa. I’ll make sure you get in for free.”_

_She got out and recovered her instrument. He watched until she was safely ensconced in the building before pulling away. Even as he told himself that he hated clubs he knew he’d be there Friday. He’d do pretty much anything to see her again._

“How’s the tour going?” He cringes internally at the question, it wasn’t what he really wanted to say, but she hums thoughtfully and he feels something in him ease.

“It’s alright. Last show I had a string snap. That was pretty unexpected.”

He furrows his brows, “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, no injuries,” she chuckles again, “Well at least none to anything worse than my pride.”

He smiles softly at that. When she had been younger, hell when they’d both been younger, pride had been everything. He had to marvel at the difference a decade could make.

“I’m glad you’re not hurt.” He says, before adding, “Although if you had been it would have been your own damn fault for not changing the strings more often.”

Her small huff is almost certainly accompanied by rolled eyes and even though he can’t see her he can picture it so clearly it’s almost as though she’s sitting in the room with him rather than halfway across the country.

_She was at the top of an unsteady ten foot ladder when he wandered out to the backyard - looking for her when she didn’t answer the door. Something approaching panic filled him as he watched her stand on the ladder’s top cap and lean too far forward to clean out her gutters._

_“What are you doing?” He snapped._

_She wobbled when she turned to look down at him, eyes wide and muscles tense as she used her grip on the eavestrough to steady herself._

_“Get down from there before you overbalance and break your damn neck.”_

_She hesitated and he was about to threaten to come up and bring her down himself but she began a slow descent that he watched with wary eyes._

_When she reached the ground and turned around he grabbed her arm and got into her face._

_“Do you have any idea how stupid that was? How dangerous? I know you’ve got a thick skull but it wouldn’t have survived an impact with the ground from that height.” He paused to take a deep breath._

_Before he had a chance to continue though she interrupted him by huffing out a sigh and sending her eyes skyward. His grip tightened and his eyes narrowed._

_She met them with a small smile that tugged up one corner of her mouth._

_“You know, you could just say you were worried about me.”_

_The words nearly floored him, as much as her preceding actions had, and he realized that this woman had steel in her. Down to the core. She wouldn’t stand meekly by and let him berate or bully her. She would challenge him and call him on the words he didn’t know how to say. At a loss for words he pulled her into a helpless kiss._

“I miss you,” he says and it’s a broken sound - something torn out of him bruised and bloodied and he wishes he hadn’t said it even as he can’t bring himself to regret the words.

“I miss you too.” Her words are soft and he can sense his same pain in the timbre of her voice.

He sighs and collapses back down to roll over and face her side of the bed again.

“Mikasa,” he says, “Next time you leave for three months, I’m following you.”

“Are you offering to be my groupie?” She teases.

He scoffs, “Hardly. Have you seen some of those vapid twits?”

She hums, “Most of the ‘vapid twit’ groupies are pure fiction. We have genuine fans that are actually pretty cool people if you have a chance to get to know them,” her voice goes sly, “I bet you’d look hot in one of those short skirts though.”

He snorts with helpless laughter. Of course that’s the direction she’d take it.

“Tell you what, I’ll pick one up for when you get back.” He deadpans.

She laughs, “I’ll hold you to that.”

They settle into a warm silence and he can almost pretend she was only away for a weekend. Can almost pretend that she’ll be back in the morning; or better yet, that she’ll slip in while he’s dozing and he’ll wake with her wrapped in his arms. He would press soft lips to the nape of her neck even though he knew that the gentle pressure would be enough to wake her. She would turn and smile at him with her hair in complete disarray and he would tease her about it and she would silence him with a gentle kiss of her own. They would press close, breathing each other in, and trade lazy kisses until they were awake enough to wander to the kitchen for breakfast.

He sighs as the image dissipates.

“What’s wrong?” She asks.

“I just wish you were home.”

“So do I. This trip has been amazing and creatively rewarding and I’ve loved almost every minute of it but,” she pauses a moment, “you’re not here. It makes it difficult sometimes, especially at night. I’m still not used to sleeping alone.”

_He walked around the room and collected his clothing as quietly as possible. He didn’t want to disturb her from the light doze she’d fallen into. As he passed by the bed to reach the door she snaked a hand out and caught his arm in a firm grip. He glanced at her but her head was turned away so he couldn’t tell how awake she was. He tried pulling his arm away experimentally but he wasn’t budging her against her will short of hunting down a pry bar._

_“_ _Mikasa?” He asked softly._

_Her words were a muffled jumble of consonants and vowels pressed into her pillow._

_“What was that?”_

_Her head moved enough so that her mouth was clear but she was still facing away from him, “You should stay.”_

_He went still as he processed her words._

_She continued, quieter and almost embarrassed, “I’d like you to stay. If you want to.”_

_He tugged at his arm again and she released him with a soft sigh and hunched a little more into herself. He deposited his clothes on the top of her dresser before climbing back into bed with her. She startled slightly as the bed dipped under his weight and she turned to him with so much emotion in her eyes, on her face, that he knew he’d made the right decision. He extricated some of the blankets she had hoarded to cover himself. She was still staring at him with wide eyes so he wrapped an arm around her and kissed her forehead._

_“Go back to sleep.” He said._

_She relaxed into him and before long her breathing had evened out. Between that and the steady beat of her pulse, from where she was pressed against his side, he was lulled enough that he drifted off into sleep not long after her._

“Yeah,” he replies, “I’m not used to it either.”

He hears her stifle a yawn over the phone and smiles softly to himself.

“You should try to get back to sleep. You’ll need your rest.”

She sighs, “I know. I just don’t want to say goodbye again.”

His heart thumped painfully at her admission, feeling suddenly heavy in his chest.

“Then don’t say goodbye. You’re in the home stretch. Just a little more than a week, remember?”

“Yes, thank you. I’ll see you soon Levi.”

“See you soon.”

The call ends and he feels a hollowness sink into his bones despite the lingering warmth he always feels around her. Even though he still misses her she has eased something in him; he actually feels sleepy, rather than just exhausted, for the first time in weeks. He thinks he may be able to fall into a proper sleep now.

He hopes he dreams about her.


End file.
